{"id":1314,"date":"2023-08-10T15:53:11","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T19:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=1314"},"modified":"2023-08-12T15:53:24","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T19:53:24","slug":"white-nationalist-patriot-front-members-sue-for-being-exposed-for-who-they-are-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=1314","title":{"rendered":"White nationalist Patriot Front members sue for being exposed for who they are | Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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BY THE IDAHO STATESMAN EDITORIAL BOARD UPDATED AUGUST 10, 2023 12:26 PM<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five people affiliated with white nationalist hate group Patriot Front are suing a Seattle-area man who they say infiltrated the group and disclosed their identities online, leading them to lose their jobs and face harassment, according to The Seattle Times. What they\u2019re really upset about is suffering the consequences of their abhorrent views \u2014 views that they feel so strongly about, they don\u2019t want anyone to know. The suit accuses David Alan Capito, 37, also known as Vyacheslav Arkhangelskiy, of using a false name in late July 2021 to convince Patriot Front to accept him as a member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once inside the group, Capito took pictures at its get-togethers in the Pacific Northwest, surreptitiously recorded members\u2019 license plates and used hidden microphones to record conversations, according to the lawsuit. The suit also accuses Capito of using another group to hack into online chat rooms, further exposing members\u2019 appalling views. We don\u2019t condone doxxing, or searching for and publishing private or identifying information about an individual on the internet, typically with malicious intent. We are not weighing in on whether this lawsuit has merit and we certainly don\u2019t condone breaking the law, which might be what\u2019s found to have happened here, as the members claim. What\u2019s most interesting about this suit is that the Patriot Front members are complaining that their hideous, \u201cunpopular\u201d beliefs have consequences. The five plaintiffs say they were fired from their jobs, have been threatened at their homes and have had their tires slashed, among other things, according to the lawsuit. While those latter two things certainly go way across the line, the first is a result of actions having consequences. \u201cThis complaint seeks to vindicate the rule of law and basic principles of free expression for persons who espouse unpopular opinions,\u201d according to the lawsuit. It\u2019s a warped view of freedom of expression when Patriot Front members attempt to completely conceal their ownership of said expression. Their views are so detestable, they wear masks in public and use pseudonyms online to disguise their identities. Idahoans are perhaps most familiar with the Patriot Front from a 2022 incident in which members piled into the back of U-Haul truck to try to disrupt an LGBTQ+ Pride celebration in Coeur d\u2019Alene. More than two dozen men were arrested and charged with planning to riot. Two of the three plaintiffs in this case \u2014 Colton Brown, 33, who led the Washington state\u2019s Patriot Front chapter, and James Julius Johnson, 37, from Skagit County in Washington \u2014 were among the 31 people arrested, according to The Seattle Times. Johnson and four other men were convicted of misdemeanor conspiracy to riot and sentenced last month to a week in jail and a $1,000 fine. The Patriot Front suit does not attempt to hide its racist ideology and its mission to \u201creforge \u2026 our people, born to this nation of our European race \u2026 as a new collective capable of asserting our right to cultural independence.\u201d It describes the group\u2019s actions as \u201cprovocative\u201d but \u201cnonviolent.\u201d In the Pacific Northwest, the group has defaced civil rights and Pride murals, and monuments and signs that promote equality, a tactic it employs nationally, according to the Counter Extremism Project, The Seattle Times reported. Stephen Piggott, of the Western States Center, which tracks right-wing extremist groups, told the newspaper that the group has morphed its tactics in recent years, moving from defacing murals and placing stickers in the middle of the night to more confrontational public flash demonstrations. \u201cYou have this uptick in activity, and the activity is getting more and more violent,\u201d he said. Since 2019, Patriot Front has been responsible for the vast majority of white supremacist propaganda distributed in the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League. And the members own their abhorrent opinions by trying to keep their identities a secret. They seem to be most upset that Capito was trying to hold them up to public scrutiny like the rest of us. Hiding behind anonymity has become an all-too-common feature of white nationalist and extremist trolls who lurk in the shadows of social media, hiding behind bogus accounts and fake avatars, spewing hate, sowing division, and threatening and intimidating others. It\u2019s that anonymity that allows their putrescent views to grow and spread like a flesh-eating bacteria \u2014 except in this case, it\u2019s more like a brain-eating disease. The fact the Patriot Front members\u2019 main complaint is that they\u2019ve suffered for being associated with these views is telling. The fact that employers \u2014 even their own relatives, in the case of Brown \u2014 want nothing to do with them tells you all you need to know. If Patriot Front members believe that they are right and just, why not attach their names to their beliefs and putrid goals? Otherwise, they\u2019re just behaving in a cowardly fashion, hiding behind ridiculous masks, fake social media accounts and in the darkness of the back of a U-Haul van. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman\u2019s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mary Rohlfing and Patricia Nilsson. This story was originally published August 10, 2023, 4:00 AM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY THE IDAHO STATESMAN EDITORIAL BOARD UPDATED AUGUST 10, 2023 12:26 PM Five people affiliated with white nationalist hate group Patriot Front are suing a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[31,26],"class_list":["post-1314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-domestic-terrorism","tag-domestic-terrorism","tag-violence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8VBh7-lc","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":701,"url":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=701","url_meta":{"origin":1314,"position":0},"title":"HOW THE USA PATRIOT ACT REDEFINES “DOMESTIC TERRORISM”","author":"Donnie","date":"March 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Pub. 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The statistics provided are from 2001 - 2016. \\ President Donald Trump calls out the KKK, neo-Nazis and other hate groups in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Domestic Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Domestic Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?cat=17"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":742,"url":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=742","url_meta":{"origin":1314,"position":3},"title":"Were the Austin Bombings Acts of Terrorism? Why Law Enforcement Says No","author":"Donnie","date":"March 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"By\u00a0KATIE BENNER\u00a0and\u00a0SERGE F. KOVALESKIMARCH 22, 2018 Mark Conditt\u2019s home in Pflugerville, Tex. The authorities have refrained from calling him a terrorist, but for many residents it\u2019s a matter of semantics.\u00a0CreditTamir Kalifa for The New York Times He used explosive devices to kill others and, eventually, himself. 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(Vernon Hills Police Department) A Vernon Hills\u00a0teenager who was the target of a college campus threat assessment appeared in court Monday to face charges of possessing five semi-automatic guns without a valid FOID card. 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